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Cup loses a little more of its magic
IT'S been the same ritual for every rugby league fan in this country, young, old and in between, for as long as I can remember.
Clustered round the radio or TV, listening with feverish intent as the balls come out of the bag, waiting for your team to be called and then celebrating or commiserating their fortunes.
Wigan at home? Hooray. London away? Aarrgghh.
The Challenge Cup draw is one of the sport's great traditions, almost as much fun as the competition itself in fact.
So why the Rugby Football League decided that Tuesday's bizarre 'behind closed doors' event was even close to being a good idea is something I will never understand.
An RAF hangar somewhere in the wilds of North Yorkshire? Balls flown in by air? Eh?
Surely, if something isn't broken, you don't try to fix it.
That's fix as in mend, rather than fix as in, er, fix.
Having said that, there are enough conspiracy theorists in rugby league - who believe that all draws are rigged, Nigel Wood was on the grassy knoll when Kennedy was shot in Dallas in '63 and Richard Lewis wants to introduce line outs - without pandering to their fantasies by conducting draws 'in camera'.
I simply can't imagine the Football Association doing something similar with their knockout competition.
Instead of having the excitement of a live draw, all we got this week was a list of teams sent out by email, losing the element of drama completely.
The Challenge Cup has already been neutered in recent seasons by the increasingly contrived seeding of amateur and professional clubs, without scrubbing any more gloss off the competition.
Please, please, please, next year, can we do things properly?
Because tradition isn't always a bad thing.
IT was interesting - and slightly bizarre - to see Robbie Fowler sitting alongside Matthew Johns and Paul Vautin on the 'Footy Show' in Australia last week.
The much-travelled former England and Liverpool striker, who I must confess I thought had been put out to pasture long ago, has signed a deal to play with the North Queensland Fury in the 'A League'.
Fatty and Matty asked Fowler about the 80-odd houses he owns in Liverpool, his career with the Reds and his thoughts on soccer Down Under.
But they never posed the question I wanted the answer to: are Leeds United still paying him 40,000-a-week?
I MADE my views on Leon Pryce clear enough last week.
But I couldn't help but notice the difference between Pryce's current status and that of Castleford no-name forward Steve Hayward, who was jailed last week for his part in the assault that also involved Hull KR full back Ben Cockayne.
Hayward has been summarily dismissed by the Tigers.
When Pryce is eventually sentenced, I wonder if St Helens will take a similar course with their most valuable asset?
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Weather for Halifax
Saturday 11 February 2012
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